The Warriors’ JaVale McGee dunks over San Antonio’s LaMarcus Aldridge during the Western Conference Finals.
Jose Carlos Fajardo — Bay Area News Group

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NBA Finals, Game 1

Cleveland at Warriors

When: Thursday, 6 p.m.

TV/Radio: ABC/1460 AM

OAKLAND >> One of the trickiest parts of the Warriors’ lob play is that not even JaVale McGee knows what’s coming.

They don’t rehearse the soaring catch-and-dunk in practice because McGee, at 29, likes to save his springy leaps for the game.

Warriors ballhandlers know in general which plays might allow the backup center to soar toward the hoop, but there’s usually no time for a nod, not even a window for eye contact.

“Once the ball is in the air, that’s when I see it happening,” McGee explained this week. “With Draymond (Green), he’ll throw it, even if I’m not open.”

One other challenge: McGee said he has to glance beneath him at his highest peak to make sure he doesn’t come down on a defender.

On that count, the center has it mastered: There’s no question the 7-foot, 270-pounder has found his perfect landing spot.

The oft-mocked NBA vagabond has, in his 10th season, found where he belongs. Previously known best as the clown prince of Shaquille O’Neal’s blooper reel, the one-time comic foil has been recast in a more serious role.

McGee is the designated dunker off the Warriors’ bench and will be counted on to play a key role as the NBA Finals with Game 1 against the Cleveland Cavaliers on Thursday at Oracle Arena.

“I think we’ve just really embraced who he is,” said Andre Iguodala, the veteran guard/forward. “He understands: ‘I’m in a situation where my strengths can really be shown and I can really be a help for a team.”

Long gone are Shaq’s lowlight reels of McGee’s mental errors and air-balled free throws. They have given way to fresh clips of thunderous alley-oops and crowd-rousing blocks. McGee’s postseason field goal percentage is .740. He has 13 blocks in 12 games.

Warriors coaches and veterans adore his production off the bench — it’s been lob at first sight.

But beyond the pursuit of an NBA title, there’s a subplot that traces back to those old “Shaqtin’ a Fool” segments on TNT. The miscues turned McGee into a punch line. But with each ultraefficient playoff performance, the Warriors’ big man is delivering the strongest possible retort.

As the best-of-seven series begins, Pamela McGee, a member of the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame, is reveling in the sounds of fading laughter.

“As a McGee, I taught my children that we would always be resilient. No matter what people throw at you, you will always come back. Because that’s what you do.”

A lesson from mom

Pamela flexed her motherly muscle before. JaVale likes to tell the story of how his mom punished him for a poor game as a kid by waking him up at a ridiculous hour to make him run in the snow.

Mom’s version is better. Consider it the extended director’s cut.

“When he tells that story, he needs to tell it right,” Pamela said, playfully, when reached by phone this week at her home in Northern Virginia.

Pamela said she was the assistant boy’s varsity coach at Detroit Country Day School back then and was ticked at JaVale, not for the bad game — those happen — but because he had been going through the motions in practice. She peeked into junior varsity practice to see her son loafing up and down the court.

So she rousted him at 5 a.m. and made him run in the early, icy cold as a reminder of what his grandmother had sacrificed in order to one day send JaVale to a $30,000-a-year private school. His grandmother raised four kids as a young single mother (his grandfather died young), and Pamela had learned to work hard at whatever she did.

“And I always told him: You have a responsibility to respect the sacrifice,” the longtime Flint, Michigan, resident said. “You have to work hard. And if you don’t work, I’m going to make you work harder. We’ll get up every single day at 5 in the morning and work.”

This was Pamela McGee’s approach during her own distinguished basketball career. As a 6-foot-3 center, she starred, along with twin sister Paula, on back-to-back NCAA championship teams at USC. In all, she averaged 17.4 points, 9.9 rebounds and shot 58 percent from the field during her Trojans career.

Pamela won a gold medal with Team USA at the 1984 Olympics. She played professionally in Brazil, Spain and Italy and was a four-time Italian League All-Star.

So when the WNBA launched in 1997, McGee was the No. 2 overall pick by the Sacramento Monarchs … at age 34.

Jerry Reynolds, best known as a longtime Sacramento Kings coach and executive, served as the Monarchs’ general manager and even recalls “Little JaVale” hanging around practice.

But what he remembers most is how mom never backed down.

“She was a good player. Hard worker. Hard-nosed. Strong-willed,” Reynolds said by phone last week. “She was really a back-to-the-basket tough guy.”

It’s a remarkable family. JaVale’s father, George Montgomery, was a 6-foot-10 center who played at Illinois and was a second-round selection by Portland in 1985 NBA draft.

JaVale’s sister, Imani Boyette, is now a 6-foot-7 center for the Chicago Sky of the WNBA.

“I don’t know if JaVale admires a part of my game, but I wish I was as athletic as him,” Boyette wrote via email. “He’s just freaky athletic.”

Star of the show

Like so many other silly fights, the Shaquille O’Neal vs. Javale McGee was born as a joke but went too far. O’Neal’s long-running segment on “Inside the NBA” on TNT featured a gag called “Shaqtin’ a Fool” in which panelists howled with laughter during a video of player gaffes.

McGee became the reluctant star of the show. It’s easy enough on YouTube to find long compilations of McGee’s missed dunks, air balls or accidental piggyback rides on defenders. There was also the time McGee nearly checked into the game while still wearing his sweatpants.

At some point, the bit teetered toward overkill. Watching a Hall of Famer and three-time MVP repeatedly pillory the lesser player becomes an unfair fight, like watching Meryl Streep cackle at the botched dialogue of a school play.

When the hostility overflowed into an ugly, profane and threatening Twitter feud in February, Pamela McGee called for it to end in spring, telling writer Mike Wise of The Undefeated: “He cyberbullied my son. Totally inappropriate.”

Lucille O’Neal, the mother of Shaq, did not disagree, telling Wise: “It’s not funny anymore, seeing the things they’re saying to each other.”

To others who loved McGee, like his Nevada coach Mark Fox, the drama grew troublesome.

“You could put up a highlight reel of some of the best players ever in the game and show their poor plays,” Fox, now at the University of Georgia, said in a phone interview. “Unfortunately, they only did that to JaVale, which I think was an unfair portrayal of who he is as a person and a player.”

‘Spark of energy’

The blemish on his record this season stems back to his time in Texas, with a lawsuit that claims McGee caused severe damage to an apartment in Dallas. His alleged transgressions, first reported by Deadspin, include keeping a cat for 178 days despite a lease agreement forbidding pets.

And it’s worth noting that Shaq was hardly his only critic. George Karl, while coaching McGee with the Denver Nuggets, once said of him: “He’s got to understand that lazy and crazy isn’t going to make it work.” Karl also said: “I think JaVale tries to find the spectacular and forces the spectacular. … I just want him to be more Tim Duncan-like.”

But the Warriors took a different tack. They signed McGee to a non-guaranteed, minimum salary contract (about $980,000) last July and have since leaned on him to be as spectacular as possible, albeit in short stretches. Now, the Warriors depend on his soaring alley-oop throw-downs to ignite the action and to open up the perimeter for their other stars.

The Warriors don’t want McGee to be Tim Duncan. They want his timed dunkin’.

“That’s what I’m in there for, for a spark of energy,” McGee said Monday. “I definitely come in there looking for a dunk, blocks, offensive rebounds and just try to get the crowd into it.”

Against the Portland Trail Blazers in Game 2, he became the first player in playoff history to have at least 15 points and four blocks while playing under 15 minutes.

“It just kind of speaks to his character and perseverance and work ethic,” Warriors star Stephen Curry said. “He believes in himself when he’s out there on the floor. He belongs and can make an impact.”